Metal Alvin – S/T

One consequential advantage of lyrics is that they cause you to ponder a more globalised meaning. Just like a two egg omlette makes a meal, while that egg alone can only really be fried as part of a meal. You could eat it raw, but it’s uncommon and upsets an unadhered stomach. So an interest increase in more conventional, combinatory consumption methods satisfy cravings, and Folk, an adage of this lyric and meal metaphor, has continually doused itself in clippings of lyricism combined with nourishing material.

One inconsequential disadvantage of lyrics, then, is that you make an effort to interpret a meaning, and sometimes the words don’t quite match what you feel inside. Emphatic gestures can become fleeting saccharine; blissed out exhortations can turn to mushy aversions. The bill-totalling of alienation from lyricism, especially in Folk, turns the culture of listener-perceived wordplay into a freakishly forgetful, flirtation-only orgy, propelling itself into no-man’s land, barren and bleak imaginatively. But there’s perpetuity in life when lucky; a middle ground between these polarities, and Metal Alvin’s self-titled folky cassette is about as nourishing as this theory can get.

Metal Alvin is Molly Donahue, a female musician raised in a small town on the northwestern shores of Michigan. In the last ten years she acclimatised to NYC, a wholly different type of living existentialism. With that transference of ‘free spirit’ to cosmopolitan scrit, she’s traced a line of longing back to where she used to inhabit; involved with the natural camber, and this comes across in her lyrics. The vocally arched/analogous mixture to the instrumentation she brings with her: acoustic guitar, electric guitar, violin expertise by way of Halifax Pier’s Jamie Reeder, and drums on “La Huesera” courtesy of Yeasayer’s Jason Trammell, works to her advantage as she carries and cajoles all timbral insides.

However this is more than indie-finite folk. Molly knocks on the doors of choral, glitch and Chris Watson-esque field recordings, like the owls hooting on opener “Water Silver”, but also the bossy ritualistic codas of fellow American duo Pocahaunted through “Roar”. It sounds like she’s tracking journey out of her home town, having influences then conflated in a coffee blender. She’s restless, never settling into a certain style, anointed by tints of “Spooky”-era Dusty Springfield (“Moon”), a less avant-pegging Joanna Newsom (“At Bay”), and an also less sprightly Bjork (“La Huesera”), where she prolongs pressure to the middle of syllables, then strings them out in wispy caffeine clouds, sprung from a desire to go the extra mile. The conglomerate of these styles and artistic comparisons arrives on ninth song “Body”, a head-noddingly hypnotic pouring out of emotion; “I’m trusting as they come / I leave you all alone / With my words, my love, my bones / And my body”, always bittersweet to the Nth degree. That quality arises from the displaced irony in the lyrics – we return to the two to one alchemic recipe theory.

Molly’s lyrics evoke another potential catalyst that only she and her album mates know properly – a building of alchemy could be referencing a marriage, but this multidimensional roulette wheel inconsequentiality is only folklore, not necessary to Folk glory. Granted, we all like to obtain context now and then if work moves us, though to me, the mystique is part of the hard-won appeal. You can use “Metal Alvin” to soundtrack marriages of any kind: feet to car, drive to job, job to end of job…you get the idea. However, it’s definitely a forward-thinking lyrical propulsion that’s present throughout, and this specialises the cassette as a special type of soundtrack. As for the instruments, they are more props for the lyrics than standalone passages in their own right, but that’s not to say they aren’t alluring. Indeed, texturally the guitar diverts under two wirings: gentle acoustic strumming, and distorted, fuzzy electric ash clouds. Violin cycles in a narrow pathway, slipstreaming nothing but thin air. Emphasis wholesale is brittle due to a certain rigidity in the wordplay overimposing it.

“Rain And Shine” concludes this intriguing narrative with Will Donahue and a baby singing the cover implied. “You’ll never know dear, how much I love you / Please don’t take my sunshine away” reinforces my inclin that this is a symbiotic narrative – travel and connectivity, exit and entry to worlds anew. “Metal Alvin” really shines nevertheless due to its consequentiality in lyrics and any inconsequentialities from that symbiosis. Released 21st February 2012 in an edition of 66 cassettes, act fast to secure consequential satisfaction if you’re anywhere near interested in the finer aspects of Folk chronology.

- Mick Buckingham for Fluid Radio

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